7. When it worked, it did show up as network device under the name Network Gadget with some more words in front of it, and it required installation of generic driver from Microsoft Corporation

8. I could ping to raspberrypi.local, but no matter what I try, it always ended up with "Connection refused" error when trying to connect to port 22 when ssh-ing.

9. Now it doesn't work at all, the device never shows up but the ACT LED is still on and flashes away as boot process continues (each tries were done after waiting longer than 90 seconds to ensure boot process is done)

Here's the content of each config files, including "wpa_supplicant.conf" file.

Wow, this is confusing! Even the official documentation said they should be put into the root folder of a drive called "boot", not a folder called "boot"

(because Windows, in its stock state, cannot read ext2 partition, I can't check the log until the setup has been done and I have to wipe it clean and start over again anyway)

Does wpa_supplicant.conf file have anything to do with this? When I did not include this file, RPi didn't even show up on my computer as a USB client/slave.

I'm also confused by the full version (including the region code) of the config file. Some say it's okay not to include that line, some say it's critical, and so on...

This is going to be a tough fight, because I can't see the live log of things happening inside this teeny tiny board yet.

Anyway, I will try your method, followed by a combination of all the solutions given by the community (on root, /boot/, ext2 partition, /boot/ on ext2 partition, etc.)

Note: if your path looks like "/dev/sda/boot/", your tutorial may not be compatible with Windows. Windows uses single alphabet drive letters instead of 3 letters or more. Again, the only partition the user on Windows will see is a small 40mb partition named "boot". 1.37GB partition will not be visible.

The boot folder is the one that windows will see when you put the SD card into a windows machine, yes you will also get some windows errors because of the other partitions on the SD card, dont follow the windows advice and format them, that would be bad.

Just navigate into the boot folder using windows explorer or something, then create the files there

My /boot/wpa_supplicant.conf contains only this (This is from perspactive of the windows view, not under linux, the content is the same, just the location will change under linux

network={

ssid="********"

psk="********"

key_mgmt=WPA-PSK

}

create an empty file in the /boot/ folder called nothing but "ssh" without the quotes of course, this will instruct linux to enable ssh at startup

these are the only two files I found I needed to add before booting, but as I said earlier, this did not work for Stretch, just pixel or earlier

note when you boot up, the filwpa... is moved to /etc/wpa_supplicant folder under linx and will dissapear from the boot folder. the ssh named file will just dissapear once ssh is turned on

Also those instructions on github are for a pi zero, not a pi zero W and is attempting to get the PI to connect via the USB port by having it pretend it is an ethernet port. you dont need to do that with the PI Zero W, just do what I suggested with Raspian, not Stretch and it should work

I'm currently not at the workshop so that would have to wait for few hours, but thanks for helping! I will try your solution once I go there. Everything sounds so similar to each other it's confusing my rusty brain. Also, that thing which sounds like a separate drive but is technically a folder and so on... whew.

(Silly me, I could have brought RPi here and used the good 3 hours I have between the class starts to fix this issue for good!)

p.s. Windows simply does not detect ext2 partition so even if you try to format it, you can't do that directly, nor Windows will ever warn you of unknown partition type ("You need to format this disk" dialog). You have to use partition manager to erase the partition manually if you want to reuse your card for something else!

EDIT: Used composite output to see the log, it seems like that whatever happens after it tries to copy "wpa_supplicant.conf" file throws everything off the sequence and it's trying to unmount /boot/ but it fails miserably.

7. When it worked, it did show up as network device under the name Network Gadget with some more words in front of it, and it required installation of generic driver from Microsoft Corporation

8. I could ping to raspberrypi.local, but no matter what I try, it always ended up with "Connection refused" error when trying to connect to port 22 when ssh-ing.

9. Now it doesn't work at all, the device never shows up but the ACT LED is still on and flashes away as boot process continues (each tries were done after waiting longer than 90 seconds to ensure boot process is done)

Here's the content of each config files, including "wpa_supplicant.conf" file.